


on love

by bao (sunwukong)



Category: A3! (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-05
Updated: 2018-05-05
Packaged: 2019-05-02 11:59:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14544255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunwukong/pseuds/bao
Summary: Azami, Kumon, and middle-school confessions.





	on love

“Someone confessed to me this week.”

Azami, who always sounds like not a single thing in the world could surprise him, says it all in a rush, like it’s been waiting to tumble out for the entire time they’ve been reading in the living room.

Kumon turns his head back from where he’s sitting at the base of the couch. “Whoa! Who?!”

“A girl in my class.”

“Really?! That’s awesome!” Kumon tosses his book aside ( _Improvisation for Beginners_ , recommended by Director) and clambers onto the couch where Azami is sitting. “I bet you get _tons_ of confessions though, Azami. I mean, you’re super cool and you do makeup like a pro and you’re good at fighting so your classmates must be lining up to date you.”

Kumon watches Azami’s cheeks flush. He might be about to go that bright red like whenever Sakyo-san tells the entire dinner table stories from elementary school. They’ve never really talked about this stuff before and Azami always gets flustered when Taichi-san bemoans the girlfriend he doesn’t yet have. Now Kumon wonders if Azami has had a girlfriend before.

“I mean, not really. Normal kids don’t really want anything to do with the son of a yakuza family.” Azami looks away. “This is the first time, actually.”

“What, no way! That’s even more amazing, then! Congrats!” Kumon grabs Azami’s hands and shakes them. “What did you say??”

“I rejected her.”

“Oh.”

“I mean, we’ve barely even talked and if you date someone you should love them, so I don’t know what she was thinking. Besides, if I say yes and we go out that means I’ll have to put her first. I’ll have to put her before everything, including acting, and makeup, and the troupe—and you. That means you’ll have to come second and I didn’t want that.”

It’s the same rush of words as before, like Azami’s been spinning them around in his head until they had to come out one way or the other. He shakes off Kumon’s hands before Kumon realizes that he’s still holding onto them.

“I didn’t really want you to congratulate me or anything like that,” Azami says, and goes back to the script abandoned in his lap that he’s been taking notes in.

Huh.

Kumon’s palms are sweating when he picks his book up from the floor. It’s a little harder to concentrate.

***

When Kumon was 14, there was an underclassman in his middle school who came to see the baseball practices. Before summer ended, she told him that she liked him, and the pink on her cheeks could’ve been sunburn. She’d wanted to hold hands, so they did, and then he thought he wanted to try kissing her on the cheek, so he did.

And then they’d gone to different high schools.

It wasn’t like he loved her, or like she was his number one, or anything like Azami was saying. If he’d been asked, at 14, if he liked her more than he liked niichan, the answer would have been obvious.

Kumon flops down on his back in bed. He’d meant to be studying or practicing.

Azami is tall and cool and strong and when he’d interrupted Yamaguchi in the middle of the street Kumon swore up and down he was exactly like a character out of one of Muku’s manga. Sometimes Kumon still forgets that Azami’s just a middle schooler.

But when it comes to love, it seems like someone told him what romance was straight out of a period drama and he never questioned it.

Kumon laughs. Azami can really be a kid, too.

***

There’s Autumn Troupe practice the next day, so Kumon doesn’t get to see Azami until right before bed, when he has his hair pulled back in his headband and one of those creepy masks over his face. (He keeps slipping them into Kumon’s sparse basket of toiletries, too, next to the toothpaste and the 2-in-1 shampoo and conditioner.)

“Night, Azami!”

Azami nods in response, and as Kumon makes his way up the stairs, he can hear Azami telling Banri, see, unlike a certain someone, _he_ takes Cinderella hour seriously.

Kumon beams. He may not get his homework done, but he _does_ make sure he’s in bed early every day.

Whether or not he actually falls asleep is another issue, though. His brain doesn’t seem to want to slow down tonight. It always happened the night before a game, heart racing, every muscle tense as if all the blood in his body had been replaced by pure, liquid anxiety—but it’s not like that now. It’s a nervous hum that buzzes in his ears alongside the sound of Sumi~san’s soft sleeping breath.

Azami doesn’t want to date his classmate who he doesn’t love.

Azami doesn’t want to put someone else first.

Because—

_You’ll have to come second and I didn’t want that._

Kumon hugs God Sankaku-kun to his chest and squeezes his eyes shut.

***

It was Summer Troupe’s turn to promote themselves on Veludo Way. Street acts are more fun now, but thinking on your feet constantly is exhausting. Kumon considers what to improve next time as he idly twirls his pen around his fingers and looks at his assignments.

Early evening pools in through the window and turns the pennants on the walls into a triangle sunset. He reaches up as if he could catch the last bit of light and save it for a grey, snowy day when even being in the batting center makes him feel antsy.

He thinks about weekend afternoons window-shopping, the way Azami’s eyes light up when Kumon asks him to explain the difference between foundation and concealer, or how an eyelash curler works. The single earbud that Azami gives him when he asks what he’s listening to this time. The look in Azami’s eyes when he’s really concentrating on the next pitch, even though they’re only tossing a ball around for fun, even though he always says that he’d rather be playing soccer.

One day after they’d tired themselves out at the park they’d sat on bench until sunset and Azami listened as Kumon talked about his high school baseball team and all the practices they’d never have again. And when he’d run out of stories Azami had smiled—the little upward quirk of his lips that always told Kumon he was listening, really—and said, _It sounds like you had a lot of fun_.

_I’m having a lot of fun right now, too!_ Kumon said. Azami’s eyes had widened, and Kumon remembers a tugging in his chest.

Outside, the sky turns from orange to purple to blue.

_You’ll have to come second and I didn’t want that._

Kumon jolts upright.

***

Azami is in the middle of his regular nighttime brooding session, having just hung up his phone call, when Kumon sprints into the courtyard yelling.

“You said you didn’t want me to come second,” he says.

“...Yes?” Azami says. He’s the usual Azami, leaning against the wall, eyebrow raised in questioning amusement.

“So I’m first.” Kumon can’t seem to catch his breath and he wonders if he’s about to get hit with the most inconvenient fever in the world. If it weren’t dark and cool outside, he’s sure he would’ve burst into flames by now. He clenches a fist into the front of his shirt and goes on. “So right now, you put me first.”

Azami tilts his head, brows knitted together, before it hits him and his mouth goes slack. “I—I don’t—I didn’t mean,” he stutters. He hadn’t even realized what exactly he’d said when he said it. The realization bubbles up in Kumon’s chest and overflows as laughter.

“I want you to be first too!” Kumon says. “I want to put you first!”

Azami looks like he might bolt, so Kumon grabs his hands.

Azami doesn’t pull away this time. Instead, he just sinks to the ground as he tries to hide his red face with their interlocked hands, and Kumon goes along with him, grinning.

**Author's Note:**

> I just wanted them to hold hands. Sorry for being scandalous, Azami.


End file.
